2023-08-26 04:07:02
“Physical activity is a non-drug therapy in its own right”, says the High Authority for Health (HAS). For sick people, the institution recognizes the benefits of sport: “reduction of the risk of mortality” for breast and prostate cancer, “reduction of pain” for osteoarthritis or even “improvement of cognitive functions” for Parkinson disease. And the list is still long.
Physical activity has proven its medical effectiveness and studies abound in this direction. Today, a doctor can therefore prescribe a physical activity adapted to a patient suffering from a long-term illness or a chronic disease. However, in practice, sport as therapy in its own right is struggling to find a place in France.
Reimbursement
at the center of discussions
François Carre, cardiologist at the University Hospital of Rennes and specialist in sports medicine, believes that “it is because prescription sport is still not reimbursed by Social Security that there is a brake on its development”. The latter, also a member of the Delandre mission, launched by the government in 2022 to accelerate the deployment of sport and health, ensures that “it is a question of political will”.
The Delandre mission should lead to a bill for reimbursement of prescribed sports sessions, only for cases of cancer or type 2 diabetes. “It’s a foot in the door, certainly, but me, as a doctor , that does not satisfy me. How am I going to convince people who have heart failure to do physical activity without being reimbursed, when it will be for cancers and diabetes? Intellectually, this disturbs me”, breathes François Carre.
Some places in France did not wait for the law to fix this reimbursement by Social Security. This is the case of the city of Strasbourg, which, for more than ten years, supports these sports sessions. And in Brittany? “The Regional Health Agency (ARS) shows real motivation for sports on prescription. She does not fully support the sessions but she can give aid for different structures, recognizes François Carre. On the other hand, in other regions in France, there are ARS which do not give a euro. It is an inequality of care between the territories, ”he says.
“The patient is an actor
of his health”
In Brittany, several sports-health structures exist. This is the case in Quimper, where Laure Jacolot is responsible for the sports medicine department. She is delighted with the fact that “the patient is an actor in his health. He will implement his treatment. With drug treatment, he takes his medicine and it can have a good or less good effect. There, it is he who will put himself at the heart of this therapy and implement it”. The emergency doctor hopes that the “sport-health houses will develop”.
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